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Tuesday, December 7, 2010

2nd grade boyfriends & the lasting love of girlfriends

In second grade, I got my first real boyfriend. I’ll never forget how it felt to have the cutest boy in my class want to be called my boyfriend.

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His name was Michael. He wasn’t just the cutest boy in my class; he was the cutest boy in second grade. He told me how much he liked me and that he wanted to be my boyfriend.“But your Jessie’s boyfriend,” I told him.“Well I’m gonna dump her,” he assured me. I smiled and ran to tell my best friend Jessica.

But we were all kind of friends in the second grade. I mean when it came down to it, we all played together on the playground, and we all went to each other’s birthday parties - that’s what a friend was in second grade.

It all went down when Michael dumped Jessie in class one day.

I remember they were standing in line to wash their hands at the classroom sink, and I saw him tap her on the shoulder. I’ll never forget the look she gave me. It was one of those mature, hand on the hip, head-bobbing-evil-eye looks that a second grader should not know how to give. After that, I had no girl friends in second grade. Jessie turned all the girls against me. It was just me and Michael against the world.

Michael and I became best friends. We would climb trees, swim, and jump on the trampoline together. It was true love.

He was even my first kiss (that wasn't initiated by my parents). But as time went on, we started drifting a part.

This was one of my birthday parties, 3rd or 4th grade. Michael is on the left in his blue shirt, I'm on the right in my pink shorts. We had a lot in common - style, obviously being one.

I think it all finally ended in 5th grade. I didn’t have a birthday party that summer, so when school came back around, Michael ignored me thinking I didn't invite him to my birthday party. And he even went so low as to not invite me to his birthday party. It. Felt. Terrible.

So in fifth grade I was a chubby little girl with a broken heart, surrounded by the same girls I left for a guy in second grade. Luckily, they were there for me. We became best friends and grew to have our own little clique that every girl in the fifth grade tried desperately to join. But we were selective. We got in fights, and barely stayed in touch over the summer, but every year it was like a new beginning with these girls. Instead of them just ignoring me at the beginning of each year like Michael did, they gave me excited hugs and told me all about their summer.

We were friends until high school, when I had to switch schools and towns. Just as it had always been, we didn’t keep in touch. New school, New beginning, No cell phone. I made whole new friends. But the philosophy I learned during my time at that school stayed with me through high school. And that philosophy is this:

When you form a bond with a guy, it can be broken. With unspoken words, wrongful actions or constant arguments, somebody will turn away from the bond. But when two girls bond as friends, it is next to impossible to break that bond. Unspoken words tend to be heard, wrongful actions are greeted with forgiveness, and constant arguments are forgotten, as the bond just grows stronger.

This is why I surround myself with friends and I'm not too keen on relationships. I learned early not to leave your friends for some guy. So now there is no more wondering where my pessimistic viewpoint on relationships came from. Second grade. lol It is amazing what an effect a girls childhood will have on the rest of her life.

3 comments:

I can't believe you had an actual love life in second grade! Don't get me wrong, good for you, but the only boy in my life at that time was Karlsson on the Roof... That might have had something to do with the fact, that I was the nerdy girl with glasses, who constantly corrected people, though.